30 November 2023
Our interviews show that claimants did not have the information they needed or wanted to understand how moving to UC would affect them. Such misinformation and misunderstanding are likely to be reasons some people are not moving to UC despite having a strong financial incentive to do so.
23 November 2023
The chancellor has done the bare minimum that is needed to prevent faster rises in child poverty. There are 4.2 million children living in poverty in the UK today. Ensuring benefits catch up with inflation, and increasing local housing allowance (LHA), will come as welcome news to the millions of families on the lowest incomes who have been left worried sick as speculation about benefit cuts and freezes played out in the news. Increasing these benefits should never have been in doubt, and we urge the government to ensure benefit uprating is placed on a statutory footing to avoid this process being repeated in future years.
22 November 2023
It’s right that benefits are uprated as usual but this should never have been in doubt and legislation mandating inflationary increases is needed as a basic protection for living standards. Struggling families have been worrying themselves sick for months about whether an unmanageable income cut was coming in order to provide the government with a rabbit-out-of-the-hat moment.
AM v SSWP (UC) [2022] UKUT 242 (AAC); Abdul Miah (by his litigation friend Mashuq Miah) (Respondent) v SSWP
The Upper Tribunal judgment in this case holds that a claimant who does not ask for backdating when they initially make their claim of universal credit ("UC") and does not amend their claim before it is decided, can nonetheless obtain backdating by later requesting a revision of the decision which only awarded UC from the day on which the claim was submitted. There is therefore no need for a claimant to have made a request for backdating at the claim stage in order for it to be considered. SSWP appealed to the Court of Appeal and the appeal was heard on 7 November 2023. The judgment of the Court of Appeal is awaited.
31 October 2023
As the Government’s Autumn cost of living payment starts to hit doormats from today, Child Poverty Action Group and Changing Realities warn that they won’t be enough to prevent more hardship for families with children this winter.
31 August 2023
28% of tax credit claimants who are required to move to universal credit haven’t claimed and have had their benefits stopped.
31 August 2023
Two-thirds of people sent a migration notice between November 2022 and March 2023 made a successful UC claim before their migration deadline. A further 5 per cent made a claim after their deadline had passed. And 28 per cent did not claim UC at all and had their legacy benefit payments terminated. We are concerned that a sizeable minority of claimants are falling through the gaps.
27 June 2023
This research study examines the extent to which universal credit (UC) adheres to the rule of law principles of transparency, procedural fairness and lawfulness. Our analysis focuses on the claims, decision making, communication of decisions and disputes processes within UC. We investigated how the design and
implementation of the UK’s first digital-by-design benefit aligns with the social security legislation underpinning it.
27 June 2023
Digital aspects of universal credit (UC) routinely lead to wrong amounts being awarded to claimants – often the most vulnerable - and to breaches of rule-of-law principles, new Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) research finds.
31 May 2023
The DWP’s research during the discovery phase of managed migration to universal credit (UC) concluded that ‘on the whole households are able to make the move to UC.’ But we are finding that, when issues do arise, the consequences can be serious for claimants causing stress, budgeting difficulties and debt.
